Python Installing

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Standard Install

Python is a wonderful package that is available for Windows, Mac, and LInux. For the Mac it’s built in as part of it’s terminal environment. (3.7?) For windows you do need to install it. For Linux it can be tricker then it probably really should be to install a current version of Python. By that I mean if you wanted to install Python 3.9 and only Python 3.9 in linux and then you go install PIP you most likely are going to inherit Python 3.8 to boot.

Python does provide a method for keeping track of virtual environment so that you can manage exposure to the versions and modules for a particular project. This is handy if your are developing multiple projects but with some mutually exclusive requirements. ie. Not one size fits all.

For example: if you are doing any financial quant work with zipline. Zipline is a python module from Quantopian which shut it’s doors in Nov 2020. The Zipline package from them is no longer being maintained. To be frank, and highly doubt you can run Zipline in an up-to-date environment of Python. It wants to use older versions of python and Numpy. (modules in Python)

Special Note: Windows Environment Pathing: This next note might come in handy. It might often be the case that you as end user need to get to the environment path without engaging a Service Desk or Security. In Windows 10 some of the methods for getting to this might be locked down. In this case this might be of service still. (and yes this is a note to myself as I hate googling for this [which means I have probably had to do it more than 3 times])

rundll32.exe sysdm.cpl,EditEnvironmentVariables

For Mac

For Apple Mac you might consider installing “homebrew” first

On the main page of https://brew.sh/ will have a copy/past line that can be used to install the components.
No “Homebrew” is not an APP that can be installed from the Apple Store 🙁

From there you can do a

brew install python3 && cp /usr/local/bin/python3 /usr/local/bin/python
This entry was posted in Programming, Python. Bookmark the permalink.